


002 "live here"

by wheel_pen



Series: Iron Man AU [2]
Category: Iron Man (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Fish out of Water, My Pepper is different, Pre-Iron Man, alternative universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-08
Updated: 2013-04-08
Packaged: 2017-12-07 20:15:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/752605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wheel_pen/pseuds/wheel_pen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For once Tony has made a mess in the middle of the night while sober and alone (knocking over a vase), so he's finally able to realize what Pepper's immediate appearance on the scene means—that she actually lives in the house with him. And has for two years. "Way to make me feel like the genius I actually am."</p>
            </blockquote>





	002 "live here"

**Author's Note:**

> 1) My Pepper is very different from canon Pepper. Her personality/origin is very different; to separate her from canon Pepper I've given her a new last name and a different hair color.
> 
> 2) The bad words are censored. That's just how I do things.
> 
> 3) Stories are numbered in the order I wrote them, which isn't necessarily the order in which they occur. At some point I'll post a timeline.
> 
> I wrote this series after the first Iron Man movie came out. It's very AU but I hope you'll enjoy it anyway. I own nothing and appreciate the chance to play with these characters.

            Three a.m.. I was not drunk (notable in itself). I was alone (also rare). And at home (ditto). All of these things are important in the story. I was very absorbed in my brilliant, revolutionary new design for a tank, which still had a few bugs to be worked out before it would actually be functional. In fact it was Pepper who pointed out that I'd forgotten to incorporate a door into the thing—she was always good for minor details like that. But adding the door had thrown the rest of the design out of whack.

            Having churned about in the studio for several hours with little progress, I was now wandering the other levels of the house, sketch book in hand, hoping inspiration might strike me.

            Instead _I_ struck a vase. Actually I struck the pedestal the vase was sitting on, stubbing my toe and bruising my knee. This led to hopping about one-legged and swearing. At some point during the hopping and swearing, the vase wobbled off the pedestal and crashed to the floor. In an empty house in the dead of night, the noise was deafening. I wanted to yelp in surprise. But I saved that for when Pepper materialized beside me.

            "Oh dear," she assessed calmly, looking at the pottery shards. "Too bad. It was pretty. I'll get the broom."

            "Wha-uh-wa—" I began articulately, limping a bit as I followed her into the kitchen. Her first stop was the freezer, where she retrieved two plastic bags filled with ice. Then she went for the broom and dustpan. "What are you _doing_ here?"

            Pepper blinked at me the way she did when she thought I was being particularly dense. "I'm assisting," she answered. That was the phrase she now used when her first impulse was to say something like, "I'm getting ice for your foot and knee, and I'm cleaning up the mess you made." Because I just don't have time for her to state the obvious in its entirety.

            We went back into the living room. I was directed to sit on the couch with a bag of ice on my knee and another one on my foot. Then she started to clean up the mess I had made. "But—how did you get here so fast?" I persisted. The tank design problems were momentarily pushed aside; I had a new mystery to solve.

            "I _was_ here," Pepper replied, picking up the largest pieces of porcelain and throwing them away. It occurred to me that the vase I had broken was probably very expensive—everything in my house was—but obviously it hadn't been one of my most treasured pieces. Given that I had utterly forgotten it was even in the room.

            "But I thought you left at eight."

            "Yes, I went grocery shopping. Then I came back here." I was probably downstairs at that point, oblivious to anything that didn't involve tanks. "Hmm, this is pretty," Pepper said randomly, looking at a palm-sized piece of the vase. "I think I'll keep this." She put it into the pocket of her suit (which by the way looked as crisp as it had nineteen hours earlier). I had learned Pepper was kind of like a magpie—I figured she had a box tucked away somewhere with her collection of shiny, pretty random objects, like coins, marbles, and possibly even bits of tinfoil. A tolerable eccentricity.

            Hanging about the house all night waiting for me to need something, however, was not. "But _why_ did you come back? The workday's over, you know. You should go home."

            Pepper carefully swept up the remaining particles of porcelain. "I _am_ home," she informed me. "I live here. I think I'll have to get the vacuum."

            "Whoa whoa whoa," I demanded, sitting up on the couch. She tried to immobilize me with the ice again but I resisted. "What do you mean, you live _here_?"

            "I have a suite of rooms down the hall," she told me. She frowned slightly. "Have you been drinking, sir?"

            "No!" I answered, hugely insulted. Though statistically speaking she was likely to be right. "You can't possibly live here. It's _my_ house. I'd _know_ if you lived here!"

            "Would you, sir?" she asked pointedly, retrieving the vacuum. I didn't see any more mess on the floor, but it apparently didn't meet Pepper's standards yet.

            I thought about her comment while she cleaned and decided she might have a point. It was a rather large house, of which I used very little. Plus, if I was there at all, I tended to have a guest I was focused on, and/or to be somewhat mentally impaired. Or basically locked away in the basement studio.

            "How long have you lived here?" I asked when she shut off the vacuum.

            "Nearly two years."

            Way to make _me_ feel like the genius I actually am. She sat down at the end of the couch and examined my toe, which was a bit red. "You've only worked for me for two years—Ouch!"

            "That's right, sir," she agreed. "I don't think it's broken. I find I can do my job better if I live here," she explained. "But if it upsets you I'll leave. Would you like to remove your pants now, sir?"

            I stood up and removed my pants. Now, before you get the wrong idea, I should point out that, well, you have the wrong idea. She just wanted to look at my bruised knee. And I had boxers on anyway. The usual Speedo I wore to the beach was more revealing. Plus, Pepper was practically like a doctor. She had seen far worse in just two years and didn't seem bothered by it, so neither was I. Actually, she seemed _less_ bothered by it than I did, which was kind of novel.

            So now that we've got that straightened out—"I doesn't upset me," I assured her (her living in my house, I meant). "But don't you get, you know, sick of me? _I_ get sick of me. _I_ wouldn't want to live with me."

            "I think you'll be alright, sir," she diagnosed, "but you should keep the ice on a little longer. I don't mind." (The last bit was about the newly-discovered, by me anyway, living arrangements.)

            Now that the idea was really sinking in, I realized it made sense—how she was always able to appear instantly in the middle of the night when something happened, for example. Anything of note that happened in the middle of the night usually happened because I wasn't exactly focused on my general environment (i.e., I was drunk), so it didn't register as weird that Pepper was always right there. Obviously this made me feel a bit on the dumb side, though. Just a bit.

            "No one _else_ lives here, do they?" I asked, no longer certain on this subject. "You don't have extended family or childhood pals squirreled away in the back bedrooms, do you?"

            She smiled a little, which was like a guffaw from someone else. Score one for me (I needed all I could get in this game). "No, sir. No one else lives here. Will you be going to bed now?"

            I tossed the sketch pad aside, all tank-related thoughts having retreated. "I guess so. Hey, can we have a slumber party sometime, then?"

            Pepper was already on the move. "Good night, sir," she said, ignoring my comment. As well she should.

* * *


End file.
